What price do you get for your eggs?

[ChickenCanoe]

WOW! We only get 2.00 a dozen and people try to talk us down saying "they only cost 1.50 at Walmart." I have trouble selling my blue eggs , give them to family. Brown eggs are the preferred color for selling, they say "I can buy white at the store."

I'd tell them to go ahead and buy them at Walmart and that you hope they enjoy them.
Eggs are a loss leader at most stores and surely are at Wally World. They sell them below cost to get people to come in and buy the rest of the garbage they make a profit on.
I don't know how people can afford to sell eggs for 2.00 unless they are rotating large flocks and buy feed in bulk.
I can break even buying bagged feed and 3.00/doz. eggs. It keeps us in eggs, meat, and feeds the whole flock - chicks and all.
As others said, most people like large eggs.
I've had people that only wanted white eggs and others that refuse to buy a white egg. Haven't had issues with green eggs. There's usually only 1 green in a carton.
I don't size the eggs normally. I usually keep the small ones for us. When I'm getting a lot of Jumbos, I'll sell a carton for $4 but usually just mix a couple jumbos into the other cartons.

 

[henless]

I haven't sold any eggs since I don't have my chickens yet, but I've been paying $3.00 a dozen locally. This is for medium to large eggs, white/brown/colors all in same carton. My egg guy is feeding a non-GMO, soy free feed. He does sell at the local farmers market and charges $4.00 a dozen there to help pay for the market stall.

About 2 weeks ago all his hens stopped laying, so I'm having to buy from the store. YUK!!!

 

[Elizafern]

We normally charge $2.50 a Dz

 

[Chookbola]

i was charging 3 but this guy just told me he charges 5 a dozen and sells 30 dozen a week. The health food stores and farmers markets sell the farm fresh eggs for 7 now wow

 

[bstromgren]

We sell them for $2 and can't produce enough to cover the demand. We think of it as a hobby, not a business. It covers our feed costs, so our eggs are free.

 

[JonB]

We sell them for $2 and can't produce enough to cover the demand. We think of it as a hobby, not a business. It covers our feed costs, so our eggs are free.

Same here. We charge $2. Even if people were willing to pay higher, I'm not greedy nor money hungry. Mine will stay $2/doz.

 

[GaryDean26]

I had this discussion with the Austin Backyard poultry Meet-up group a while back. Most of the folks in Austin were selling organic eggs for around $5-$6 a dozen. We have egg contest sponsored at a lot of the poultry shows by the local poultry club. Those that have the grand champion eggs can demand a higher price, but no one seems to paid more for colored eggs or eggs from certain breeds (although a colorful carton of eggs does help you sell more eggs than a one color carton of eggs). I live an hour from Austin out in the country and can't get that price for farm eggs. The supply to demand ratio is a lot more lopsided in a big heath conscious city. I know someone that sell farm eggs for $7.00 a dozen in San Francisco where the demand is high too. I sell for $3.00/dozen.

I have done taste testes between different breeds and prefer the Marans eggs to anything else I have tried, but I don't have the time to educate all my customers on the differences in shell composition from one breed to another of the difference in diet from a battery hen to a free range hen, etc. So I just price my eggs to sell and am never surprised when new customer come back the next week after taking a dozen eggs to buy three more dozen saying they were so good they went through them all in two days. I don't make money on the eggs. Chicken are just a hobby for me and if I can sell eggs I can afford to keep more chickens.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

Where I live, the farmer's market sells eggs around $5 to $6 a dozen...and to me they look mismatched and odd sized and often not very clean, but they appear to be selling eggs.

For several years I got $5 a dozen from friends who set the market price...they asked to buy my eggs and told me they would pay $5 a dozen. However this last summer I noticed a drop in my egg sales as the local supermarkets began to compete with brown free range eggs at a lower price. Originally free range, non-hormone, non-antibiotic eggs were about $5 a dozen for large, maybe $4.50...now they are about $3 a dozen, and sometimes lower...so this summer I found I needed to reduce my price to $4 to help sell my eggs better...although most customers are still happy to pay $5 and often will just give me $5 as they don't want the change back.

I make sure my eggs are clean and well sized...overall large to extra large. (I use a postal scale to weigh my dozen to make sure they are above the minimum for large and usually they are to the minimum for extra large). I only sell brown eggs currently, but I will be including blue/green eggs hopefully soon (if the EE's chip in come spring).

I have one customer who prepays for one dozen a week for 2 or 3 months at a time...so I guess I have an egg contract. On high season, I keep an Egg-lert list of those who like to buy eggs from me to announce I've got an extra dozen or two for sale. Usually I have no problem selling them, sometimes I don't get a taker and get to make extra omlets and a pound cake.

I have reduced my egg contract customer to $4 a dozen as she faithfully pays ahead and as I said the free range eggs in the market have come down so much. I do tell my customers that the eggs they get from me are less than a week old, often only a few days old which is received very warmly. (The average age of a supermarket egg is 6 to 7 weeks).

I don't rate myself organic as I don't buy organic feed, just grain fed, free range, non-hormone, non-antibiotic eggs from happy, healthy hens.

My customers like buying locally and from raisers who they know are treating their animals humanely. (I live in the Portland Oregon area so local sustainable is a big deal here.)

To those customers interested, I provide photos of my animals and settings, which they enjoy and adds to their desire to purchase from "animals they know."

My experiences
Lady of McCamley

 

[GaryDean26]

Where I live, the farmer's market sells eggs around $5 to $6 a dozen...and to me they look mismatched and odd sized and often not very clean, but they appear to be selling eggs......

I make sure my eggs are clean and well sized...overall large to extra large. (I use a postal scale to weigh my dozen to make sure they are above the minimum for large and usually they are to the minimum for extra large). I only sell brown eggs currently, but I will be including blue/green eggs hopefully soon (if the EE's chip in come spring).

As far as marketing goes, I would bet that they vendors of "vegetarian" eggs are getting $5.00-$7.00/dozen. I live in the outskirts of northern Virginia. The prices for free range, pastured eggs at local farmers markets varies from $4.00 - $5.50/dozen. The closer you get to Washington DC the higher the prices. While I would like to sell my eggs for that amount, I do not have or want the volume to support travelling to get top dollar. So I sell to neighbors and local folks for 3.50/dozen and to a farm-to-table restaurant for $3.00/dozen. The important thing is to move the eggs such that 1) I do not face a huge number of eggs in my refrigerators and 2) the chickens essentially pay for their feed and maybe a little extra.

 

[AxisOfBeagles]

Many thanks to all who replied. As well this forum I was asking around some other folks and the responses were similar.

* Egg sellers on the west coast and in the NE seem command a higher price for 'farm eggs' than those in the south or midwest.
* Neither egg size, color, nor breed seem to make a great deal of difference in price other than the perception that "farm eggs aren't white".
* The main criteria that drives price differential seems to simply be 'farm eggs' or 'organic eggs' - with very little understanding of things like true free-ranging, non-GMO feed, avoidance of antibiotics, etc.

That latter point is the one that I find most perplexing. I would have expected there to be greater market sensitivity to food supply issues - but by and large people selling eggs seem to care a lot more than the people buying the eggs.

For our part, Mrs Beagles sells to friends and acquaintances for $5 a dozen (northern california, where that price compares favorably with similar product in the organic foods markets) - and we emphasize that our chickens are free-ranged, with all-natural non-GMO feed supplement etc. But most people seem oblivious to anything other than that these are fresh farm eggs that aren't white and have dark yolks.